Yearlong

Carpark;
2005

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In 2001-02, the iconoclastic experimental duo of Keith Fullerton Whitman and Greg Davis armed themselves with laptops and a bewildering array of sound files to undertake an ambitious (particularly by the standards of abstract electronic improvisation) world tour. Along the way they apparently recorded their every stray whirr and blip, and now-- after what must have been a mind-boggling editing process-- they've whittled nearly 18 hours of live audio footage down to the relatively succinct 45-minute compilation Yearlong.

Due to this nomadic recording process, Whitman and Davis have understandably put little emphasis on continuity here, choosing instead to offer Yearlong as something of a representative cross-section of their various joint creations. This has resulted in a sampler with an astonishing constantly evolving pool of noises and textures, but one that unfortunately doesn't generate the momentum necessary for these pieces to cohere into a gratifying whole.

As composers both Whitman and Davis possess a restless streak of invention, so it doesn't feel entirely accurate to label this album as a departure for either artist. Nevertheless, Yearlong consists predominantly of pieces that are considerably freer and more dissonant than what I've previously associated with either performer.

Thanks to their chosen equipment and methods, it'd be virtually impossible to identify which musician is actually responsible for generating which noises. However, Whitman in particular seems to be really stretching his legs here, as most of these pieces bear little resemblance to either the fractured IDM of his Hrvatski recordings or the rigorous dronescapes of past albums like 2002's Playthroughs. Tracks like the opener, recorded in Cambridge, Mass., in May 2002, immediately thrust the listener into an inhospitable electronic dust-bowl, with loose, jarring fragments of sound flying from every direction. Other performances, such as the first of two recorded at the Knitting Factory in June 2002, are studded with random, percussive scraps that stubbornly refuse to assemble themselves into recognizable rhythms. (One can only hope that the audiences who witnessed some of these live events had somewhere comfy to sit.)

Elsewhere, snatches of piano or orchestral samples briefly bubble and surface before being dashed against the duo's rugged electronic coastline. The most vibrantly constructed piece, recorded at the 2002 Impakt festival in Holland, finds the two sounding as if they are conducting a distant symphony from within a gentle meteor shower, and draws Yearlong to a tranquil yet appropriately diffuse close.